Viewers evidently did not find much alluring about MTV’s “Eye Candy.”
The Victoria Justice vehicle scored a paltry 0.2 adults 18-49 rating with 589,000 viewers for Monday’s premiere episode.
As a point of comparison, no episode of MTV’s “Teen Wolf” has ever drawn fewer than 1.29 million viewers in the timeslot, and many episodes do more than three times as well in the adults 18-49 demographic.
The most recent “Teen Wolf” season premiere, which aired on June 23, 2014, drew a 0.9 rating with 2.184 million viewers.
No one expected “Eye Candy” to be as successful as “Teen Wolf,” but curiosity in the series premiere should have minimized the distance between the two.
“Eye Candy” also compares unfavorably to the recent launch of MTV’s “Finding Carter.” That series, which theoretically appeals to a similar crowd, opened with a 0.7 rating and 1.687 million viewers on July 9, 2014.
Competition from ESPN’s juggernaut broadcast of the college football championship did not do any favors to rival programs, but the extent to which it damaged a young female-skewing show is unclear (the game did score a whopping 5.6 rating in the females 12-34 demo, but that pales in comparison to its 11.0 rating in the adults 18-49 demographic; “Eye Candy” drew a 0.7 in the F12-34 bracket).
And even if it did take a one-time bite out of “Eye Candy,” the fact that “Eye Candy” will potentially lose some viewers who curiously tuned into the first episode but have no plan to return in future weeks removes any guarantee of a significant uptick for subsequent episodes.
